Arts and Humanities Commons^™

Into The Imagined Forest: A 2000-Year Retrospective Of The German Woods, Richard Hacken

Faculty Publications

In a "House of Learning" lecture in the Harold B. Lee Library in October, 2008, Richard Hacken gave this presentation, a combination of text and images. Coming from the history of ideas, this retrospective of the German woods looked at historical, linguistic, artistic, philosophical, political, literary, cultural, and of course botanical aspects of the German forest. In summary, five major forest themes arise from Germans imagining their own German woods: (1) taming the external and internal wilderness; (2) establishing social justice; (3) advocating national unity; (4) maintaining a sense of the sacred; and (5) encouraging ecological awareness.

Demonstrative Induction And The Skeleton Of Inference, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

It has been common wisdom for centuries that scientific inference cannot be deductive; if it is inference at all, it must be a distinctive kind of inductive inference. According to demonstrative theories of induction, however, important scientific inferences are not inductive in the sense of requiring ampliative inference rules at all. Rather, they are deductive inferences with sufficiently strong premises. General considerations about inferences suffice to show that there is no difference in justification between an inference construed demonstratively or ampliatively. The inductive risk may be shouldered by premises or rules, but it cannot be shirked. Demonstrative theories of induction …

The Methodology Of Musical Ontology: Descriptivism And Its Implications, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

I investigate the widely held view that fundamental musical ontology should be descriptivist rather than revisionary, that is, that it should describe how we think about musical works, rather than how they are independently of our thought about them. I argue that if we take descriptivism seriously then, first, we should be sceptical of art-ontological arguments that appeal to independent metaphysical respectability; and, second, we should give ‘fictionalism’ about musical works—the theory that they do not exist—more serious consideration than it is usually accorded.

Nietzsche/Pentheus: The Last Disciple Of Dionysus And Queer Fear Of The Feminine, C. Heike Schotten

Political Science Faculty Publication Series

This article examines the scholarly preoccupation with the hypothesis that Nietzsche was gay by offering a reading of Nietzsche's texts as autobiographical that puts them in conversation with Euripides's drama The Bacchae. Drawing a number of parallels between Nietzsche, self-avowed disciple of Dionysus, and Pentheus, the main character of The Bacchae and demonstrated antidisciple of Dionysus, I argue that both men experience their sexual attraction to women as somehow intolerable, and they negotiate this discomfort—which is simultaneously an unjustified paranoia and fear of the feminine—through the appropriation of feminine capacities and qualities for themselves. This appropriation ultimately expresses these men's …

Purloined Voices: Edgar Allan Poe Reading Samuel Taylor Coleridge, Alexander M. Schlutz

Publications and Research

This essay unfolds the complex intertextual relationship between the work of Samuel Taylor Coleridge and that of Edgar Allan Poe. References to and extended borrowings from Coleridge’s poetry and philosophical texts mark Poe’s œuvre throughout, but – as is only fitting for borrowings from the great borrower Coleridge – they are never anything as simple as plagiarisms or acts of intellectual theft. As this piece demonstrates through readings of Poe’s early poetological text “Letter to B–,” the Dupin story “The Purloined Letter,” and the late tour-de-force prose-poem Eureka, tracing the recurrence of Coleridgean poetry and prose in the work …

Book Review: Nanoethics: The Ethical And Social Implications Of Nanotechnology, Kevin Elliott

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Las Cuestiones Sicilianas De Ibn Sab‘Īn: El Texto, Sus Fuentes Y Su Contexto Histórico, Anna Ayşe Akasoy

Publications and Research

The Sicilian Questions are the earliest pre-served text of the philosopher and Sufi Ibn Sab‘īn of Murcia (c. 614/1217-668/1270). Even though the prologue of the text claims that it is a response to questions sent by Frederick II to the Arab world, it seems more likely that it was an introductory manual for Arab students of philosophy, dealing with four specific and controversial problems as away of presenting general concepts of Aristotelian philosophy. This article analyses the structure and way of argumentation in the Sicilian Questions. Particular attention is being paid to the relationship between mysticism and philosophy and …

Simone Weil's Spiritual Critique Of Modern Science: An Historical-Critical Assessment, Joseph K. Cosgrove

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper evaluates Simone Weil's philosophy and theology of science from the perspective of an historical phenomenology of science.

Reid's Defense Of Common Sense, P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

Thomas Reid is often misread as defending common sense, if at all, only by relying on illicit premises about God or our natural faculties. On these theological or reliabilist misreadings, Reid makes common sense assertions where he cannot give arguments. This paper attempts to untangle Reid's defense of common sense by distinguishing four arguments: (a) the argument from madness, (b) the argument from natural faculties, (c) the argument from impotence, and (d) the argument from practical commitment. Of these, (a) and (c) do rely on problematic premises that are no more secure than claims of common sense itself. Yet (b) …

Diagnosing David Foster Wallace, Amanda Redinger

Senior Honors Projects

David Foster Wallace’s novel Infinite Jest is usually touted by its fans as being a postpostmodern opus of unparalleled genius; this reaction is inconvenient for me insomuch as I don’t actually agree. More specifically, I have difficulty with the way Infinite Jest’s thematic content is framed by the techniques used to express it, despite the fact that Wallace’s verbal acrobatics are the stuff of legend. This paper argues that the style in which Infinite Jest is written consistently undermines the thematic considerations being simultaneously addressed, creating a dissonance that interferes with the reader’s ability to engage the novel on the …

A Foray Into Food Writing: A Philosophical Approach To Contemporary Food Movements, Rebecca Long

Senior Honors Projects

For my Honors Project I chose to explore one of my passions, food writing. To accomplish this I did extensive research into several food movements with which I was previously unfamiliar. On the basis of this research I generated short papers that became appendices to my final product. The research grounded subsequent journalistic pieces, which explore intriguing aspects of these food movements but in a prose style and at a scale more appropriate to a general readership.

Native American Flute Meditation: Musical Instrument Design, Construction And Playing As Contemplative Practice, Daniel Cummings

Senior Honors Projects

For almost two years now, I have been involved in hand-crafting and playing my own Native American-style flutes. In the course of that time, this hobby has gradually merged with my interests in mindfulness and meditation practices to produce a unique result, nearly a fully fledged form of contemplation in its own right. For me, flute making and playing have become inseparable and vital components of a seamless process, one whose various stages can all be undertaken as occasions for the application of meditative techniques. Defining meditation in essence as the expansion of awareness in any activity—whether focused on a …

The Worldviews Of Hinduism And The Christian Believer, Will Hedrick

Senior Honors Theses

In this thesis, the Vedanta branch of Hinduism will be studied in order to gain an understanding of this diverse religion. The Vedanta concept of God, the self, the problem of life, the cause of this problem, the solution, and means to reach this solution will be examined in detail. After explaining these concepts, they will be compared with Christianity in order to see what common ground exists. Along with this, apologetic thoughts will be presented so that the Christian can better evangelize the Hindu. Finally, the concepts will be reexamined with the goal of finding truths that may help …

Fibs In The Wikipedia (Supplemental Data), P.D. Magnus

Philosophy Faculty Scholarship

These are details of research conducted in November and December 2007. The file is meant as a supplement to publication, and I have not attempted here to provide any analysis of the results

The Philosophy Of Mathematics, Erin Wilding-Martin

Sabbaticals

The philosophy of mathematics considers what is behind the math that we do. What is mathematics? Is it some cosmic truth we discover, or is it created by humans? Do mathematical objects such as numbers and functions really exist, or are they just symbols we have invented? Two of the great debates in the history of mathematical philosophy center around ontology and epistemology. Where did mathematics come from? How do we know that it is true?

Where did mathematics come from? Is it discovered or created? Ontological questions are concerned with the nature and status of mathematical objects. Some people …

Forgetting The Subject, Christa Davis Acampora

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.

Piece For The End Of Time: In Defence Of Musical Ontology, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

Aaron Ridley has recently attacked the study of musical ontology—an apparently fertile area in the philosophy of music. I argue here that Ridley’s arguments are unsound. There are genuinely puzzling ontological questions about music, many of which are closely related to questions of musical value. While it is true that musical ontology must be descriptive of pre-existing musical practices and that some debates, such as that over the creatability of musical works, have little consequence for questions of musical value, none of this implies that these debates themselves are without value.

Works, Recordings, Performances: Classical, Rock, Jazz, Andrew Kania

Philosophy Faculty Research

In this essay, I undertake a comparative study of the ontologies of three quite distinct Western musical traditions – classical, rock, and jazz – approached from the unusual angle of their recordings. By the ‘ontology’ of a tradition I mean simply the kinds of things there are in that tradition and the relations that hold between them. A study of this scope is bound to leave many questions unanswered when restricted to this length. The ontology of classical music has been debated in the analytic tradition for close to half a century, and there has been a growing interest in …

Metaphysics Without Pre-Critical Monism: Hegel On Lower-Level Natural Kinds And The Structure Of Reality, James Kreines

CMC Faculty Publications and Research

My focus here is on what Hegel has to say about nature and natural kinds, in ‘Observing Reason’ from the Phenomenology, and also in similar material from the Logic and Encyclopedia. I intend to argue that this material suggests a surprising way of stepping beyond the fundamental debate. There can of course be no question of elaborating and defending here a complete interpretation of Hegel’s entire theoretical philosophy. I will have to restrict myself to arguing for the unlikely conclusion that there is an approach that can combine and integrate the strongest points made by both sides in …

Husserl, Jacob Klein, And Symbolic Nature, Joseph K. Cosgrove

Philosophy Faculty Publications

This paper examines Husserl's later philosophy of science in light of Jacob Klein's work in the history of mathematics and in the context of 20th-century "spacetime" physics.

Adam Smith And His Sources: The Evil Of Independence, Sandra J. Peart, David M. Levy

Jepson School of Leadership Studies articles, book chapters and other publications

This paper explores the foundations of Adam Smith’s view that the philosopher is the same as the street porter. Despite their innate similarity, Smith recognized that the role of the philosopher, someone who provides useful instruction to fellow humans, is not that of the street porter (Pear and Levy 2005; Schliesser 2005, 2006). He also saw that this potentially useful employment may entail a biased perspective on human conduct. Motivated by matters too distant for ordinary people to notice, the philosopher may come to believe that he is better than those he studies and to regard himself as independent form …

Can Virtue Be Taught?, Glenn Rawson

Faculty Publications

One of Plato's liveliest Socratic dialogues, the Protagoras, stages a debate between the greatest philosopher and the greatest sophist of their time, with other leading sophists in the audience. The debate concerns Protagoras' own specialty: the teaching of 'virtue ' or arete, a crucial term in ancient Greece that involves both moral goodness and human greatness. Protagoras and Socrates end up with oddly overlapping intellectual positions: Socrates contends that virtue is not something that's taught, though h e believes that all of virtue is essentially a kind of knowledge. Protagoras denies that all virtues are forms of knowledge, though he …